LivingSocial
- 🦄Became a unicorn2011
- 📈Peak valuation$6 Billion ’11
- 💔Became a Unitard2014
- 💸Last valuation~$60M
How it happened
LivingSocial was the chief rival to Groupon in the daily-deals craze, reaching a valuation as high as ~$6B in 2011 with backing from Amazon (which took a $175M stake) and a J.P. Morgan-led round. The daily-deals model proved faddish and unprofitable: growth reversed, Amazon wrote down its investment by about $905M, and a 2013 financing marked LivingSocial at roughly a quarter of its peak. After years of shrinkage and layoffs, it was sold to Groupon in 2016 for a 'non-material' sum — effectively wiping out its once-enormous valuation.
Source: Bloomberg / GeekWire / Yahoo Finance (peak ~$6B 2011, $176M Series F led by J.P. Morgan; Amazon's $175M stake led to a ~$905M write-down; marked to ~$1.5B 2013; sold to Groupon for a non-material amount 2016)
